China And The U.S. Are Cooling Their Cooperation To Curb North Korea

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) walk together at the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida, April 7, 2017. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Give the world’s two superpowers credit for effort but don’t expect a whole lot more. Since the presidents of China and the United States met for their first time in April, they’ve spoken the language of cooperation to hobble North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs spearheaded by the enigmatic leader Kim Jong-un. To appease China, which doesn't want the Kim regime to collapse and leave a power vacuum on its border, a senior U.S. admiral had said the United States wants to bring North Korea not to its “knees,” just its “senses.” China reportedly planned to cut the flow of petroleum to North Korea in a sanction-like gesture likely to win favor with Washington.

But Trump shows signs of wanting more out of his cooperation with China, especially now as everyone’s asking whether 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier was intentionally hurt in North Korea before his release -- and death a week later. North Korea had detained him for a year on suspicion of stealing a propaganda poster. “(Trump) commented personally…that he continues to be very troubled by what happened to Otto Warmbier and would like to see China do more,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a briefing Friday.

And Trump isn't likely to get a lot more. China never quite bought into the cooperation thing. Its state-run media (here, for example) continue to question what Trump is after. China wants to be seen balancing North Korea against an angry world but generally resents direct pressure against aid such as stopping fuel supplies. “While Chinese analysts recognize the dangers posed by North Korea, they have long seen Chinese influence as limited and believe that U.S. hostility toward North Korea is the root cause of (Korean) peninsular tensions,” Forbes contributor Scott Snyder writes.

Now the U.S. government is talking about sanctions against Chinese companies that sell to North Korea, experts and media outlets say. Some outlets believe Chinese firms are providing military equipment. That move by the U.S. side would tear at the root of a traditional friendship between the two Communist neighbors.

The Trump Administration may continue to encourage China to pressure North Korea, meaning it hasn’t given up, says Leif-Eric Easley, assistant professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul. He cites comments in that spirit made at the June 21 U.S.-China Diplomatic and Security Dialogue in Washington. But the United States might just sanction Chinese companies anyway, affecting their commerce in the United States.

“Secondary sanctions on Chinese companies doing business with North Korea remain an option and may be necessary if China’s further cooperation is not forthcoming,” Easley says. “But such measures are no silver bullet against North Korea’s weapons programs and may result in even less Chinese cooperation.”

Things probably won't change much when Trump meets the new president of South Korea Thursday in Washington. Trump and his counterpart Moon Jae-in are expected to discuss a joint U.S.-South Korean Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). Moon suspended THAAD after he took office last month pending an environmental review. That move played well with China, which suspected the system would peer into its own secretive military operations because of its proximity to Chinese soil. But it leaves the United States one fewer way of stopping Pyongyang’s missiles. Those missiles, which Pyongyang regularly tests off its coasts, are more likely to hit the south than any other country, experts believe, because each Korea still claims the other more than 60 years after the Korean War. Moon prefers dialogue over military escalation.

“It’s hard to say without a readout of the summit, but it’s unlikely to be a game-changer over the long-term,” Easley says.